Shakespeare's Visual Theatre
Staging the Personified Characters

Kiefer looks at the personified characters created by Shakespeare in his plays, his walking, talking abstractions.

Frederick Kiefer (Author)

9780521827256, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 September 2003

374 pages, 40 b/w illus.
24.4 x 17 x 2.2 cm, 0.8 kg

'Frederick Kiefer's Shakespeare's Visual Theatre provides readers with a prime example of the power of informed conjectural readings based on extraliterary sources. … This is a carefully researched and thoughtfully written examination of an important and neglected aspect of Shakespeare's drama. … Kiefer's book has the capacity to reorient significantly current discussion of Renaissance English literature, dramatic and otherwise … important and painstakingly detailed …'. Sixteenth Century Journal

In this study of Shakespeare's visual culture Frederick Kiefer looks at the personified characters created by Shakespeare in his plays, his walking, talking abstractions. These include Rumour in 2 Henry IV, Time in The Winter's Tale, Spring and Winter in Love's Labour's Lost, Revenge in Titus Andronicus, and the deities in the late plays. All these personae take physical form on the stage: the actors performing the roles wear distinctive attire and carry appropriate props. The book seeks to reconstruct the appearance of Shakespeare's personified characters; to explain the symbolism of their costumes and props; and to assess the significance of these symbolic characters for the plays in which they appear. To accomplish this reconstruction, Kiefer brings together a wealth of visual and literary evidence including engravings, woodcuts, paintings, drawings, tapestries, emblems, civic pageants, masques, poetry and plays. The book contains over forty illustrations of personified characters in Shakespeare's time.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
List of illustrations
1. Spring and winter in Love's Labour's Lost
2. Revenge, murder, and rape in Titus Andronicus
3. Rumour in 2 Henry IV
4. Hecate and the witches in Macbeth
5. The five senses in Timon of Athens
6. Time and the deities in the late plays
Conclusion
Select bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]